Climate change

[hrothgar]

Are 5-star islands top notch? People move off and onto islands all the time. Just who is the ignoramus?

 

The fact that some people move onto and off of islands does not mean that all people can move onto or off of islands

 

GDP per capita of te Phillippines = $2,765

GDP per capita of Vanatu = $3,276

GDP per capita of Tuvalu = #3,880

GDP per capita of Fiji = $4,375

 

Lets assume that (somehow) the folks who lived on these islands actually had the where-with-all to move.

 

Where precisely are they supposed to move to?

 

I know Britain's philosophy towards taking immigrants...

I know that of the US (its not any better)

The Australians are locking migrants up in concentrations camps.

 

Remember the Phillippines? There are 100 million people living there... Yes, a lot of the islands are mountainous but a lot of the population is concentrated on the coastal plains.

 

Your ignorance and overwhelming sense of privilege are astounding.

Its telling that you frame this discussion in terms of Miami Beach and "5 star islands"

[hrothgar]

Topic has been reopened

 

Slow learner, eh?

[PhantomSac]

Tempted to read this thread to see what the fuss is about but I'm guessing the good parts were deleted

[Al_U_Card]

Same old, same old.

Divergent positions and opinions met with opposing viewpoints and differing sets of data and analysis. The poor manners generally derive from insecurity and/or immaturity.

Water Cooler, what now?

 

Btw Thanks to the mods for upholding the tenets and rules of this site.

[hrothgar]

Same old, same old.

The poor manners generally derive from insecurity and/or immaturity.

 

 

The poor manners are a natural outgrowth of being forced to deal the non-stop lies of 9-11 truther for the better part of a decade.

 

5 years back, you were treated with a modicum of respect.

These days, I doubt that I'd slow down if I saw you crossing the road...

 

Not all people deserve respect.

[cherdano]

Tempted to read this thread to see what the fuss is about but I'm guessing the good parts were deleted

Latest hiccup happened as follows. The most obvious troll of the century makes another idiotic post, this time not only insulting the intelligence of anyone who would read the post and care about the topic, but also making fun of some tens of millions of the poorest people on earth. Hrothgar makes a reply that not only attacks this post, but also accurately describes the worthiness of the overall contributions of this poster to the discourse on BBF. Hrothgar's post gets removed.

[cherdano]

Topic has been reopened

How about a compromise. This thread keeps going, but noone gets to post in the watercooler unless they have made at least x number of posts in other forums. This would both ensure the watercooler serves it's actual purpose, and keep the most blatant idiot out of here.

[hrothgar]

For the record, the reason that I am going quiet on this thread is that I am flying off to Tehran in a few minutes. (For a change, my account has not been suspended)

[Winstonm]

How about a compromise. This thread keeps going, but noone gets to post in the watercooler unless they have made at least x number of posts in other forums. This would both ensure the watercooler serves it's actual purpose, and keep the most blatant idiot out of here.

 

 

How about simply a new thread because, after all, the issue for most objectors is not now nor has it ever been climate science - the issue has always been about the findings of science resulting in a perceived impairment of free market profits, a jousting with the ideological windmills of socialism and communism, i.e. a defense of a systemic capitalistic ideology with no human cost too high to pay to maintain the facade that those beliefs must be held sacrosanct in order for freedom and democracy to survive.

 

The tail of denial of scientific findings and organized obfuscation of facts is a sordid story that most likely had its beginnings with leaded (Ethyl) gasoline, weaves its way through acid rain, the ozone layer, cigarette smoke, and now, finally, climate change.

 

Better to debate the underlying reasons for denial than give a thread a cover story by calling it something it is not.

[kenberg]

How about a compromise. This thread keeps going, but noone gets to post in the watercooler unless they have made at least x number of posts in other forums. This would both ensure the watercooler serves it's actual purpose, and keep the most blatant idiot out of here.

 

 

Or a variant. I'm thinking I need to spend at least as much time playing bridge on BBO as I spend reading and replying to various social/political thoughts here. It's easy to get sucked into these disputes.

[Bbradley62]

How about a compromise. This thread keeps going, but noone gets to post in the watercooler unless they have made at least x number of posts in other forums. This would both ensure the watercooler serves it's actual purpose, and keep the most blatant idiot out of here.

What "actual purpose" is that? How does requiring people to make random posts in the bridge-related or rules-related forums make the Water Cooler any better? That sounds like telling people to play in the free robot games in order to get a TCR; all that does is aggravate people who don't want to play with robots and take limited entry space away from people who do. If casual bridge players who are BBO members want to reserve their forum participation for subjects they are knowledgeable about (for example, NCAA football), we should not have a problem with that.

[kenberg]

What's a TCR? Not that long ago I had to ask Cherdano what's a TNC. I am really out of touch!

[Bbradley62]

Tournament Completion Rate. It allows tournament directors to restrict enrollment to players with records of finishing tournaments that they start.

[Al_U_Card]

Clearly, the OP requests what can be done about Climate Change....with one option being to not allow any kind of objection or rejection of the "consensus" proposed by the IPCC that CO2 is bad, money needs to be handed over for their mitigation operations and that control of our personal and national habits must be ordained by those that know better (even if they don't always follow their own advice).

 

Another option is to continue to look closely at conflicts of interest, especially where large sums of money and bureaucratic control are at issue.

 

Still another is to look at ALL of the evidence and determine the certainty and assurance of the propositions that have been made and the net effect of those proposals as they will be carried out in the future.

 

Other activities, be they bridge-related or not, can hardly have any bearing whatsoever.

[nige1]

The Climate Change controversy unhinges a few posters but it's

• always breaking news,
• of vital interest to many, and
• better elucidated by scientific observation and argument than most Water Cooler topics.

In most topics, some contributors regard some posts as rubbish. They are free to refute such posts or to advance their own facts and arguments. It seems wrong however, that simply by insulting those with whom he disagrees, a poster can close down a topic. Please would the moderators reconsider their decision.

Thank you, moderators for unlocking the thread. What little I know about this vital topic, I've gleaned mostly from this debate.

What controversy?

There seem to be lots of controversies :( e.g.

• Are we experiencing climate change? Assuming the answer is yes, then
• Is it largely caused by us (e.g. burning fossil-fuels, deforestation, pollution, damming, mining, fracking, destroying water-tables, paving flood-plains)?
• Is it a threat to us? in the short term? Assuming the answer is yes, then
• Is there anything we should do or stop doing that might improve our prospects?

[Al_U_Card]

CO2 climate sensitivity (how many degrees C a doubling of CO2 will cause) and attribution (to our contribution) are the key. They depend on theory, observation and prediction (projection in Climate Science).

The theory says some (about 1.2 C) the observation seems to be less (and swamped by natural variation) and the projections of the climate models appear to be much more and not coincident with observation.

 

Look to Ben Santer and the IPCC report of 1995 for the first declaration of a human influence. The science said "Not evident." but the SPM got changed to "A definite indication.".

 

Mann, Santer and Houghton. Names that will go down in history along with McCarthy and Lysenko.

[nige1]

Sorry. Duplicate

[nige1]

The tale of denial of scientific findings and organized obfuscation of facts is a sordid story that most likely had its beginnings with leaded (Ethyl) gasoline, weaves its way through acid rain, the ozone layer, cigarette smoke, and now, finally, climate change.

Those are instructive examples and most experts now seem to agree with Winston. But not always and there are other historical controversies where the expert majority was equally adamant but spectacularly wrong

Better to debate the underlying reasons for denial than give a thread a cover story by calling it something it is not.

Petitio principii. IMO, climate change is a complex subject but so important that we should at least try to examine the evidence/argument. ourselves, as it unfolds.

Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.

[Al_U_Card]

Lead removal from paint and gas were obstructed? Not a consensus as much as corroborated findings that led to a logical conclusion. For sure smokes were a case of conspiracy and obfuscation as an industry tried to delay its inevitable demise (when is anybody's guess...) As for the ozone hole and other agendized consensuses (diet, ulcers to name a few) CAGW is a concerted effort to scare and influence the electorate into accepting all manner of follies both economic and scientific.

[Winstonm]

Richard Feynman said

 

 

 

He also said this:

“Ordinary fools are all right; you can talk to them, and try to help them out. But pompous fools-guys who are fools and are covering it all over and impressing people as to how wonderful they are with all this hocus pocus-THAT, I CANNOT STAND! An ordinary fool isn't a faker; an honest fool is all right. But a dishonest fool is terrible!”

[Al_U_Card]

But his quote that applies most to CAGW:

 

"It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong."

[nige1]

IMO, we should try to keep an open mind. In science, there are no final truths.

 

There remain uncertainties about climate change. Not least, the question raised in the OP: If we might be under immediate threat, should we allow for that contingency by changing our behaviour? What remedies are likely to be effective. For example

• Are solar and nuclear power a better bet than wind-farms? and,
• Should we urgently curb aviation and private transport?

[Al_U_Card]

Naomi Oreskes (Merchants of Doubt) recently excoriated CAGW luminaries for daring to suggest that nuclear might be the (only) way to go. Cheap and available energy for everyone should not be in the cards if it is not as green as the money spent on their subsidies...

Since total eradication of the species would (by IPCC figures) result in a reduction of something less than half a degree C of global average temperature, perhaps doing something about climate change involves doing something else instead?

[Winstonm]

IMO, we should try to keep an open mind. In science, there are no final truths.

 

 

 

 

The fact that science may keep an open mind about a closed subject if new genuine facts about that subject arise does not mean it is likely or even very possible that new data will come to light.

[nige1]

The fact that science may keep an open mind about a closed subject if new genuine facts about that subject arise does not mean it is likely or even very possible that new data will come to light.

Einstein re-interpreted existing data to good effect. Anyway, each day brings more climate data. For example, in the UK we're experiencing unusually high rainfall.

 

The OP addresses the causes of climate-change and what we should do about it. As Winstonm regards the subject closed, perhaps he would share his views on practical remedies. For example, the UK government is currently deciding at which London airport, we should build a new runway. Should we instead be ploughing up existing runways? and should most rational people agree broadly on the way to proceed?